There are few tips that we at vidIQ recommend you follow to help ensure your filling out the metadata on uploads properly:

The Video Title should be descriptive and encourage viewership

The Description should feature one sentence/thought describing the video that is specific to this particular video. Additional description and details can be added, but remember it will appear below the fold.

Tagging is vital—start off with general keywords and become more specific. Remember to ask yourself who, what, when, and where. Think about what prospective viewers will be searching for when looking for your video.

BONUS TIP: Creator Suggested videos (the ones that appear in the right column on the YouTube watch page) are extremely powerful. Owning this section helps to extend user watch time and can turn one view into many. One simple way to help encourage YouTube to relate your video is to have shared keywords amongst related videos. Examples include: show title, channel name, show type, and/or category

vidIQ Pro users have access to the vidIQ Search Companion. This helpful tool appears on the right-hand side of any YouTube search results. The companion makes keyword research a snap!

Start off by running your keyword search related to the video you want to optimize, for this instance we'll be using "auto racing":

You can see above, the Search Companion displays Top Suggested and Top Search keywords. It also shows a list of trending videos for this search query.

Take note of the keywords that best fit your content as well as the score listed next to each one. Make a quick list of the best ones to use for your video—order them by score (if available).

Also, click on a few of the videos that are trending in your country (little flags denote trending countries). If they line up with your content, grab a few of the strongest ones to draft off of (explained below)

Keep it in mind that you can run as many searches as you'd like, so do a few to make sure you've got a good list!

"Borrowing" Tags and Drafting

Like the old saying goes, "If you can't beat them, join them!" Why reinvent the wheel when a number of your competitors have cracked the code? You can learn a lot from viewing your competition's tags… and you might even pick up a few views.

Whether your tags come from keyword research or trending videos using Pro (explained above) or from pulling tags from specific videos using basic, you can use them to draft off your competition.

What do we mean by "drafting"? Drafting on YouTube is using trending and competitor keywords on your video to get a piece of the action, so to speak. Users are constantly looking for videos on YouTube through search, Google or on YouTube directly. If your content is relevant, why shouldn't users watch it?

It's important to note that we aren't encouraging you to fill up your metadata with random trending tags, quite the opposite. You should only be adding the tags that make sense for your video.